Items of jewelry are often given as gifts to signify important moments in a life such as a wedding or engagement, birthdays, or other celebrations. Items of jewelry include rings, pendants, bracelets, beads, brooches and the like. Often the gift giver opts to engrave the item to impart a special personal message for the recipient: “I love you” or perhaps even “For you, on our wedding day 12 Aug. 2006” or “Congratulations on passing your exams”. Typically, wedding, engagement and eternity rings are engraved on the inner surface of the ring in a symbolic gesture of intimacy; only the giver and receiver need know the message is there and what the message is. Celebration jewelry, given to a recipient to mark an important life event, may include a bracelet or necklace with charms, beads, or pendants, and these items may also be engraved with a message or date adding that personal intimate touch
Engraving items or pieces of jewelry may require some skill, time, and effort and often requires some sort of machinery or engraving tool. It can be difficult to engrave very small pieces of jewelry and especially challenging to engrave pieces of jewelry with patterned or contoured surfaces. Furthermore, there is a limited space in which a person may engrave a message on any piece of jewelry and the character size is limited so the resultant content of the message is also limited. For example, the message on the inside of a wedding band is typically restricted to only a few characters, for example 25 characters. Clearly any such message is thus very limited.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data from a tag or chip attached to an object, principally for the purposes of automatic identification (e.g. allowing a person access to a building) and tracking and monitoring products (such as stocktaking or assembly line monitoring). Some tags or chips are passive and do not require a battery. Passive tags or chips are powered by the electromagnetic fields used to read them. Non passive tags or chips use a local power source and emit radio waves (electromagnetic radiation at radio frequencies). The tag or chip contains electronically stored information which can be read by a reader from up to several meters away. Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards covering communications protocols based on existing RFID. NFC requires touch or bringing a reader and tag into close proximity to each other in order to establish radio communication with each other.
The prior art shows a variety of uses of RFID tags and chips. International patent application WO 2011/154213A provides a system for monitoring the stock in dynamic stores using RFID and discloses an RFID communication system, comprising at least a first stationary RFID antenna and a second stationary RFID antenna for transmitting and receiving data; and an RFID transponder fitted to an item or a group of items, wherein the RFID transponder electronically stores at least one identifier of the item or the group of items, and wherein the first RFID antenna is placed at an intake region and the second RFID antenna is placed at an issue region of a storage path of the dynamic store in order to detect the item or the group of items using the identifier of the RFID transponder.
Taiwanese patent application TW 2009/19344A discloses the use of RFID tags in ticket applications. An anti-counterfeiting electronic ticket system is disclosed, which is used as an anti-counterfeiting application to prevent a simple electronic ticket from misuse of an illegal duplication means by means of a photographing method. A certificate can be an image, a pattern or words, and is printed on a sticker or on the surface of other entity articles by means of an anti-counterfeiting printing technology. Alternatively, the certificate can be a wireless radio frequency identification (RFID) label to form an entity certificate. A user holds an electronic ticket image displayed on a monitor of a mobile apparatus and a pre-registered entity certificate, utilizes a ticket-examining apparatus to read content information of the entity certificate and the electronic ticket, and verifies by mutual certification method of the two to be used as imitation prevention of the electronic ticket.